Samsung 850 Pro M.2 Raid

Rbunkis wrote: Has anyone been able to create a working raid 0 array with 2 Samsung 850 Pro m.2 ssd's. I was able to create the array in the bios. I created the USB raid driver so windows 10 can see the drive in the setup. I am able to see the raid drives after loading the windows 10 driver but setup with create the proper partitions to install windows to. The error message says its not enabled in the bios. AsRock tech support was no help....

First we need to know what mother board you are using, as that may have an affect on the situation.

Did you change any UEFI settings from their default values that are related to installing an OS, besides setting the SATA mode to RAID?

Since the 850 Pro's are standard SATA drives, you should have no problem using them in a RAID 0 array without any special settings in the UEFI that are needed for PCIe SSDs.

I underlined a portion of your post that I don't understand. Did you mean setup did not or would not create the proper partitions? Or something else? The error message you mentioned is fairly generic, and is unlikely to be a description that would help you understand the problem.

After loading the F6 RAID driver, which is fine but not necessary with Windows 10, in the Custom Install screen you return to after loading the F6 driver, did you click on the New button? That will create the proper partitioning.

Also, it is the normal procedure to leave the USB flash drive with the F6 RAID driver in the PC until the Windows installation completes. But it seems you have not proceeded into that stage yet.

Your description of the steps you followed sound perfect to me. But I just realized something I cannot believe I missed.   I'll quote your first post again to review:

Rbunkis wrote: Has anyone been able to create a working raid 0 array with 2 Samsung 850 Pro m.2 ssd's. I was able to create the array in the bios. I created the USB raid driver so windows 10 can see the drive in the setup. I am able to see the raid drives after loading the windows 10 driver but setup with create the proper partitions to install windows to. The error message says its not enabled in the bios. AsRock tech support was no help....

You say you are using M.2 850 Pros... no such SSD exists. You must have two Samsung PCIe NVMe 950 Pro SSDs, correct?

Are you using the "F6" RAID driver from your board's download page, the SATA Floppy Image ver:14.6.0.1029? I imagine you are, but if not you should use that version, since it supports NVMe SSDs in RAID.

The main difficulty you are having is caused by the SSDs being NVMe, not SATA SSDs. The Intel (SATA) RAID driver you are using is compatible with PCIe and NVMe SSDs. I should say, it is compatible with Intel NVMe SSDs in RAID 0. There is no other RAID driver you can use.

You mention earlier you enabled all the M.2 slots. Was that the PCIe Storage Remapping options in Storage Configuration, for the two M.2 ports you are using?

The question now is, do I recall anyone using 950 Pros in RAID 0 as OS drives. I don't think so...

I've personally only used Samsung AHCI SM951s in RAID 0 as a Windows 10 drive. Another forum member, DooRules, created a RAID 0 array of two 950 Pros, but just as a data drive to test the RAID performance.

Both of us have gone back to using a single 950 Pro, SM951, or Intel 750, as an OS drive, since the RAID 0 performance is not worth it. As is typical of RAID, the small file 4K performance suffers, which is the main advantage of these SSDs. The usual areas that SATA SSDs gain in performance in RAID 0 do not occur with any of the PCIe SSDs, except for large file sequential read speed.

The RAID 0 arrays are also rather fragile. If you simply do a UEFI/BIOS clear, and start the PC with the PCIe Storage Remapping options disabled (as they are by default), the RAID 0 array will fail. A UEFI/BIOS update will cause the same thing to happen. IMO, the performance and fragility of these PCIe SSDs in RAID 0 is due to trying to use two very different storage protocols, SATA and NVMe, at the same time on one platform/board. We can barely get NVMe SSDs listed in the UEFI. Intel has managed to get that situation working remarkably well, but we take to much for granted IMO. The Intel driver needs work in multiple areas.

Regardless, we can still try to get this working for you, if possible. Intel supplies an F6 NVMe driver to replace the Win 10 NVMe driver, that is known to have some issues. That Intel driver only works with Intel SSDs at this time. Samsung does not supply an F6 NVMe driver, but does have one that installs in Windows. Someone has extracted the actual Samsung NVMe drivers from their installation package. Installing them along with the Intel RAID driver MIGHT help you, purely a guess on my part. Search for "Samsung F6 NVMe driver", and see what you find. I'm out of time tonight...